Sacred and Profane Love eBook

II

I should have left then, though I had a wish not to
leave. But I was prevented from going by the
fear of descending those sinister stairs alone, and
the necessity of calling aloud to the concierge in
order to get out through the main door, and the possible
difficulties in finding a cab in that region at that
hour. I knew that I could not have borne to walk
even to the end of the street unprotected. So
I stayed where I was, seated in a chair near the window
of the larger room, saturating myself in the vague
and heavy flood of sadness that enwraps the fretful,
passionate city in the night—­the night when
the commonest noises seem to carry some mystic message
to the listening soul, the night when truth walks
abroad naked and whispers her secrets.

A gas-lamp threw its radiance on the ceiling in bars
through the slits of the window-shutters, and then,
far in the middle wilderness of the night, the lamp
was extinguished by a careful municipality, and I was
left in utter darkness. Long since the candles
had burnt away. I grew silly and sentimental,
and pictured the city in feverish sleep, gaining with
difficulty inadequate strength for the morrow—­as
if the city had not been living this life for centuries
and did not know exactly what it was about! And
then, sure as I had been that I could not sleep, I
woke up, and I could see the outline of the piano.
Dawn had begun. And not a sound disturbed the
street, and not a sound came from Diaz’ bedroom.
As of old, he slept with the tranquillity of a child.

And after a time I could see the dust on the piano
and on the polished floor under the table. The
night had passed, and it appeared to be almost a miracle
that the night had passed, and that I had lived through
it and was much the same Carlotta still. I gently
opened the window and pushed back the shutters.
A young woman, tall, with a superb bust, clothed in
blue, was sweeping the footpath in long, dignified
strokes of a broom. She went slowly from my ken.
Nothing could have been more prosaic, more sane, more
astringent. And yet only a few hours—­and
it had been night, strange, voluptuous night!
And even now a thousand thousand pillows were warm
and crushed under their burden of unconscious dreaming
souls. But that tall woman must go to bed in
day, and rise to meet the first wind of the morning,
and perhaps never have known the sweet poison of the
night. I sank back into my chair....

There was a sharp, decisive sound of a key in the
lock of the entrance-door. I jumped up, fully
awake, with beating heart and blushing face.
Someone was invading the flat. Someone would catch
me there.

Of course it was his servant. I had entirely
forgotten her.

We met in the little passage. She was a stout
creature and appeared to fill the flat. She did
not seem very surprised at the sight of me, and she
eyed me with the frigid disdain of one who conforms
to a certain code for one who does not conform to
it. She sat in judgment on my well-hung skirt
and the rings on my fingers and the wickedness in my
breast, and condemned me to everlasting obloquy.